Comment by dang
10 years ago
> Until you finally launch, submit a Show HN to have your perceived turn in the sun and it completely bombs
We sometimes invite people to repost those or (if not too much time has gone by) we give them a second shot at the front page. There's one on the front page now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10730695.
Helping the best content to surface is hard. Anyone who knows of a good post that deserves a second chance should email us (hn@ycombinator.com). Eventually we may build support for this into the software.
I can attest. I had two submissions that were inexplicably removed from the front page (both Show HN's). I emailed to ask why and in both instances dang reinstated my submissions.
Were you told why they were removed from the front page? That's more interesting to me/the community than the fact he reinstated.
As dang said, 1st time was due to false positive on the ring detector. He just asked me honor system style. That was cool, but even cooler, when it was reinstated kevin, YC partner, commented with some practical/usable feedback. This was a thing kevin and dang coordinated on a couple Fridays, and I hope they continue or even expand that effort for the community.
The 2nd time I think it was a flagging, maybe people didn't agree it should have been a Show HN.
We always tell people. False positives by the voting ring detector in that case, IIRC.
Appreciate your work Dan, just saying that I can see why people stray from the "perfectly good" community: because when it comes time to finally have your launch moment, it's so tough on HN. And I bet it feels like a kick in the guts for people who've slaved over their app and finally talked themselves into showing people what they've been working on.
And it's tougher again without asking friends to give you a boost and if you're outside the main active timezones.
If there was a top bracket or sidebar that helped bring Show/Ask topics to the attention of all users, that would help IMO. There's also no incentive to upvote topics, no explicit messaging "Should this make HN front page for a bit?" or "Was this good?", so I bet many don't hit the arrow.
There could be a lot of different reasons why your "Show HN" wasn't successful. Applying that to every "Show HN" is not correct.
My experience was very different from yours. Stayed on the front page 16 hours, spot #5 for 5 hours (iirc). Similar to you, I had to work myself up to even submit it. I procrastinated 2 hours before posting. Only told 1 friend I had posted. However, I'd consider mine very successful. I did not expect it to be, because if I had, I would have increased the Digital Ocean droplet and my server would not have crashed. Of the ~5 hours I was at spot #5, my server was down almost 3 hours between 3 different crashes.
I say this on reddit often, between Show HN and PH, people give PH way too much credit. Show HN is a great launching platform, just remember who the audience is.
There are countless Show HNs that never make the front page. I'd guess far more don't make it than do. And I think the average Show HN is far better than the average HN submission.